I get most of my inspiration from older records and older production styles, and that ends up rearing its head in the records that I make.

If you think of the way Howlin' Wolf made records, you get the feeling there wasn't a production manager onsite, or a publicist having his say on how he should sing the songs. When you listen to his records, you feel like you're tapping into his voice.

I learned a long time ago that fame and money is not a ticket to happiness.

Even though someone has died, a piece of their spirit can still be alive. That's an exciting world for me to take music into, or to attempt to do that.

When I started to take literature and poetry classes, I just started to get inspired by these new incredible works of art that I had never seen or heard of before. I wrote a lot of bad high-school poetry, just like pretty much everyone did, I think, at some point. For me, the inspiration never really stopped.

I don't like the way recording to digital sounds.

In order to make a normal-sized record, a singer songwriter should have a couple dozen finished songs. Once they go through the process of production, the ones that scream out at you that they're finished are the ones that make the record.